Running a Business is a Lot like Parenting

No we don’t mean your employees are like babies; but there really are ways that running a business is like parenting. There are many parallels between the two and since many business owners are also parents, it can help in both departments to take a look at these parallels.
Some references have already been made to parenting like you would run a business. You need goals and objectives, a purpose and mission statement, rules and expectations and of course, an evaluation process. However, it’s not as often that we look at how being a parent can help us be a better business person.

The Start-Up Venture

Start-ups and being a parent are both complex, confusing and just crazy most of the time. You can look at your start-up like having a new baby in the house. He cries and we don’t always know what those cries mean. We have to play guessing games and do the process of elimination to sort out whether or not it’s a wet diaper or a tummy ache. But as time goes on, we get through the growing pains and we begin to build intuition about our businesses. We know what those cries signal and quite often, we’re able to prevent a potential problem before it gets to that stage with proper maintenance.
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